38 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



when they come at you as some of them 

 surely will trying to make a horse-trade with 

 you, or sell you a second-hand wagon or some 

 other piece of junk, your man will most likely 

 be able to speak a quiet word in your ear that 

 will save you no end of disgust with yourself. 

 Besides, there'll be lots and lots of times when 

 you'll be mighty glad to have a man around to 

 talk to, a man who speaks in the vernacular of 

 the farm. The chances are that, even with 

 good luck, you won't get very far with actual 

 farming in your first year. You'll really need 

 that time for doing as we did getting over 

 your feeling of strangeness and making delib- 

 erate plans. 



Laura and I sat upon the topmost rail of an 

 old worm fence that morning for an hour or so 

 and watched our tenant at his work. He was 

 in his cornfield. Corn had been planted two 

 or three weeks ago. We could see the pale 

 green lines of the young seedlings zigzagging 

 across the field. The crop was getting its first 

 cultivation this morning. The man had no 

 cultivator; he was working with a plow. A 

 dinky little plow, it was, built pretty much on 

 the lines of those you see in pictures of farm- 

 ing in the Holy Land or in barbarous Mexico. 



